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HubSpot CMS Website Redesign Increases Leads by 139%

2015COS
AWARD WINNER HubSpot 2015 | Best COS Success Story Award Winner

In 2015 HubSpot rolled out their first awards for impact. This award was the annual winner for best website success story in the COS, now called CMS.

OVERVIEW Cooking School Grows with HubSpot CMS Web Redesign.

The Chopping Block has been teaching people in Chicago how to cook for over 25 years. The Chopping Block is a recreational cooking school that combines education and entertainment, as our staff provides each guest “The Chopping Block Experience.”

From the greeting you receive when you walk in our store, to the music you hear, to the tools and equipment you use, to the menu you create, to the plate you eat on, to the products you shop for, we strive to provide the ultimate experience for our customers.

GOALS

Increase Visibility Online
Grow Class Attendance
Exploding Blog Traffic

CHALLENGE A website to match their in-person user experience.

When The Chopping Block decided to redesign its website, it had education on its mind.  

The Chopping Block wanted its site to represent “The Chopping Block Experience”, which means everything one experiences when walking in the store.

From the music they hear to the tools and equipment they use, to the menu they create, to the plate they eat on, to the products they shop for, The Chopping Block strives to provide the ultimate experience for their customers.  That was the challenge that was presented when they came to us for a HubSpot COS website redesign.

*HubSpot renamed their COS into HubSpot CMS in recent years.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That statement certainly rings true with websites as well.  On the other hand, there is not a lot of argument about great user experience.   In the past, The Chopping Block had bad luck with their web designer.  As a result of a bad partnership they were worried about wasting, even more, money with a new company.  Instead, as they grew and offered more, they simply kept adding to an outdated website.

ChoppingBlock old website
andrea miller

"After I learned of HubSpot, I knew it was the right fit for my business, The Chopping Block. I went in search of a designer who could work within the COS but also think out of the box. I found that at Revenue River. Eric and his team were professional and worked hard throughout our entire project. And with a site of 100+ pages, it was a lengthy one! "

Andrea Miller

Marketing Manager - THE CHOPPING BLOCK

Then, along came Google’s insistence that sites need to be optimized for mobile use.  According to Google’s Mobile Path to Purchase report;

  • Consumers spend 15+ hours per week researching on their smartphone and on average visit mobile websites six times.
  • More smartphone users start researching about products or services on a search engine vs. a branded mobile site or app.
  • 93% of people who use mobile to research go on to complete a purchase of a product or service.

GOALS FOR THE PROJECT The 5 primary objectives for the website.

With the threat of losing SEO rankings and alienating their clientele by not being mobile friendly, it was finally time to make some changes.  The Chopping Block had five objectives that were vital to them as they went looking for the perfect content management system (CMS):

  • Mobile Optimization
  • Responsive Design
  • User-Friendliness
  • Inbound Marketing Integration
  • Security

APPROACH The plan, the team, and the execution.

After careful analysis of HubSpot's COS and it's ability to handle some of the custom integration requirements The Chopping Block found that Revenue River could accomplish all of their criteria.  They already liked their design style so they decided to invest in their COS website redesign.

To organize the different aspects of the business, we integrated multiple functionalities such as differentiated blog feeds, third-party scheduling, and calendar system, creative use of call-to-actions and accompanying landing pages, and multiple media types including a video library.

By utilizing a modular or tiled format, we were able to generate containers for each niche of the business on the main level pages. This helped keep the pages organized and allowed the visitors to easily identify their desired content and work their way further through the site.

Since The Chopping Block’s offerings are constantly changing, this allowed the client to easily update specific information on the page without having to worry about breaking the layout. In addition, by utilizing CTAs that appear on multiple pages, the client can easily update the CTA with a new video for instance, and that would then change the video on all the pages at once; thus saving both time and energy, and probably some frustration along the way.

True to inbound marketing form, the success has come quickly and is measurable.  They now have a website that acts as an extension to their business and they know that their 25,000 monthly visitors are wowed every time they explore their site and find outstanding recipes and instructional videos.  The website is an aspiring chef’s dream and the traffic growth and engagement statistics support that. 

Since the site went live in April, The Chopping Block has 260,275 total visits, of which 153,381 of those found it organically. In fact, organic traffic has been steadily rising since the launch in April, from 11,502 visitors in April to 26,205 in December.  In only 9 months organic traffic rose by almost 15,000 monthly visitors.

RR_ResponsiveSet-ChoppingBlock-2_1

IMPACT Added results with the blog's explosion.

They publish a ton of valuable content that truly adds to the user experience so it was vital that the redesign helped get more eyes to it.  Since April, their blog has gone from 971 blog views to an over 4,500 views in November and December.  That’s over 4600% growth in 8 months!!

Month   

Views

April

971

May

1954

June

2782

July

4071

August

3651

September

3637

October

4444

November

4645

December

4566
ChoppingBlock4

A powerful impact on lead generation.

As great as traffic and blog views are, what’s the point if they’re not converting traffic to leads?   It’s often the entry point for website visits and they needed to overhaul the design to make it more successful in converting traffic through the blog to their classes and resources.  Since the website launch in April they have gained 3,840 leads and averaging 426 a month.  The last three month of the year they’ve averaged over 514 leads per month.

ChoppingBlock5

The end result? One happy client!

The Chopping Block now has a site with great user experience that represents “The Chopping Block Experience”, which is great for their current and potential customers.  They also have a site that represents the inbound marketing experience, which for The Chopping Block, made their investment well worth it. 

According to The Chopping Block’s marketing and PR professional, Andrea Miller, “with a site of 100+ pages, it was a lengthy one! They developed a website that could never be accused of looking like a template; it's unusual and beautiful in design. It stands out, but it also speaks to who we are as one of the busiest recreational cooking schools in the country.” 

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